I'm curious to know if anyone has seen a website or any news information on a new start up in the US using the name "Eastern" or "New Eastern" - I was interested in reading what their business plans, anticipated routes etc are.

Any information gratefully received.

Young and beautiful and thin and gorgeous AND BANNED ! Cya at airspaceonline.com, losers

Eastern Airlines had operated a B737-800 wet-leased from Xtra Airways on services out of Bellingham, Washington for some time in 2006 until I believe mid-2007 until they were forced to suspend operations. One of the Xtra 738s that operates for Myrtle Beach DirectAir now still has the basic Eastern livery.

I guess technically Air Tran is liek the "new eastern" in route structure in some ways....in fact back in 1993 before ValuJet took off, one of the names being floated was New Eastern...a lot of FL employees are ex-EA

I remember reading something like that in Airliners magazine within the past year. It was an interview I believe with someone once involved in Eastern and he bought the rights to the name but never said it was a possibility he might resurrect the name but never mentioned any aircraft type.

There is a new Eastern in the works. A friend of mine had lunch with a consultant for the new Eastern. Obviously, he couldn't reveal too much but did say the new Eastern would be based out of MIA and would offer low fare, high quality service (like Virgin America) to South and Central America, the Caribbean, and various cities throughout North America. No A/C type was mentioned nor a start up date (but certainly within the next year or two). The individuals who had this conversation have unquestionable credibility. Take it for what it's worth.

I hope so. I was an ex-Eastern employee based at CCS. There will never be another airline like EA. Big family, great service on board, they always look after their employees, What else can I say? I will be so happy to see them back at CCS.

Quoting BA747 (Reply 14):I hope so. I was an ex-Eastern employee based at CCS. There will never be another airline like EA. Big family, great service on board, they always look after their employees, What else can I say? I will be so happy to see them back at CCS.

Do you remember number of flights, frequencies, equipment Eastern used to operate into CCS? in which years? any pictures?

Quoting BA747 (Reply 14):I hope so. I was an ex-Eastern employee based at CCS. There will never be another airline like EA. Big family, great service on board, they always look after their employees, What else can I say? I will be so happy to see them back at CCS.

Sadly, I fear that there will be fewer and fewer US carriers serving CCS due to the current political climate between the Venezuelan and American governments.

Quoting DL Widget Head (Reply 11):There is a new Eastern in the works. A friend of mine had lunch with a consultant for the new Eastern. Obviously, he couldn't reveal too much but did say the new Eastern would be based out of MIA and would offer low fare, high quality service (like Virgin America) to South and Central America, the Caribbean, and various cities throughout North America. No A/C type was mentioned nor a start up date (but certainly within the next year or two). The individuals who had this conversation have unquestionable credibility. Take it for what it's worth.

I don't think there is much gate space available in MIA, unless
the expansion will free up some old gate space.

Quoting WDBRR (Reply 17):I don't think there is much gate space available in MIA, unless
the expansion will free up some old gate space.

At the moment there is less than there used to be due to AA now using the "high numbered" "E" gates, but that's only going to last a year or two until they finally finish the construction on the new north terminal "D" gates.

But, there is plenty of space available in F, G, H.... and of course that brand new, billion dollar south terminal ("J???") complex.

That's actually the address of Eastern Air Lines HQ in NYC; 10 Rockefeller Plaza used to be called the Eastern Airlines Building . What's interesting is that the trademark was renewed back in 2005. Does anyone know if the CH 7. docket on Eastern is still open? That could explain why the trademark was renewed.

There's some guy out of State College, PA who holds the copyright to Eastern Airlines. This same person holds the copyright to the old Eastern "bird in circle" logo as well.

I would be nice to see Eastern Airlines (new) come back. But, using MIA as their home hub is suicide before they even get this off the paper. AA will not alow anyone to walk in and start flying with out a fight..... I hope it is turn, but hard to believe.

Colgan is not changing their callsign to 'Eastern'. However, Colgan refers to their US Express operation as 'East' and their CO Connection operation as 'West'. Perhaps that is the basis for the confusion.

Quoting DTWAGENT (Reply 26):I would be nice to see Eastern Airlines (new) come back. But, using MIA as their home hub is suicide before they even get this off the paper. AA will not alow anyone to walk in and start flying with out a fight..... I hope it is turn, but hard to believe.

True, they should base themselves further north - FLL, PBI, TPA, MCO etc.

PBI might not be a bad idea, if fares are low enough people will drive from the Miami area to fly them to South America.

MCO would be great domestically for low cost, though they are going to have a tough fight with Southwest - but Eastern could once again be the official carrier of Disney World.

Quoting NASCARAirforce (Reply 28):MCO would be great domestically for low cost, though they are going to have a tough fight with Southwest - but Eastern could once again be the official carrier of Disney World.

Quoting NASCARAirforce (Reply 28):Quoting DTWAGENT (Reply 26):
I would be nice to see Eastern Airlines (new) come back. But, using MIA as their home hub is suicide before they even get this off the paper. AA will not alow anyone to walk in and start flying with out a fight..... I hope it is turn, but hard to believe.

True, they should base themselves further north - FLL, PBI, TPA, MCO etc.

PBI might not be a bad idea, if fares are low enough people will drive from the Miami area to fly them to South America.

MCO would be great domestically for low cost, though they are going to have a tough fight with Southwest - but Eastern could once again be the official carrier of Disney World.

MIA would be the best choice if this hypothetical airline ever gets off the ground (it won't, if it even exists). TPA and PBI don't offer the mass traffic to Latin America, and people will not drive what can be up to two hours in traffic to catch a 2-3 hour flight to Latin America. MCO is way uber-competitive; FLL is too crowded. MIA might be an AA hub, but there is room for a second airline to hub. And, right now, AA can't properly respond, and they won't be able to for 2-3 years, because they don't have aircraft to expand. They can only react by pricing, like they have with Spirit, but not by adding capacity. If this hypothetical airline were to follow the Virgin America model - which is a regular-fare, premium service model, not a low-fare one - then AA wouldn't be as threatening.

PBI might not be a bad idea, if fares are low enough people will drive from the Miami area to fly them to South America.

MCO would be great domestically for low cost, though they are going to have a tough fight with Southwest - but Eastern could once again be the official carrier of Disney World.

Might make sense to fly into MIA or FLL and hub at MCO(what kind of gate availability does MCO have now)? If PBI is willing to make the cost consessions for landing fees, they would be attractive. However, if Eastern is going to find to Latin America, might I assume that they would want to be closer to the latino base closer to the City of Miami?

Southwest, Airtran don't fly internationally yet(although Airtran has its partnership with several airlines that do go international) and Delta flies internationally from Atlanta, so it might be a good plan to head south from MCO.

I remember reading something about a new Eastern Airlines back in the early 90s. The rumor was that it would be based or at least fly into Birmingham. I can not remember the paper whether Huntsville or Birmingham but have always wondered about these dreams and what makes them so news worthy. I doubt it made many other news markets.

Quoting NASCARAirforce (Reply 28):MCO would be great domestically for low cost, though they are going to have a tough fight with Southwest - but Eastern could once again be the official carrier of Disney World.

If they fly routes from MCO to Latin America that would be an underserved market they could capitalize on. An existing and still growing market current airlines are ignoring.

Quoting DAYflyer (Reply 4):There is a new Eastern. Itr is headed up by Joe Leonard, and they remade it into an LCC called AirTran.

Air Tran Airways was started by the former CEO of Mesaba Aviation, Robert Swenson, Back in 1989, when I applied to work for Mesaba, the compnay was called Mesaba Aviaiton an AirTran company.
When Swenson wanted to start his discount airline out of Orlando with 737s, NWA objected as it would violate some pilot contract with NW as the Air Tran sector of the company might take pilots from the Mesaba operation. It was soemthing along those lines....Please correct me if I am wrong....

It would be nice to see Eastern flying again....Id alos like to see Braniff come back, but with a slow and deliberate expansion, not one where you open a couple new station every other week......

It was the merger of Valujet and AirTran that really helped to reshape the airline into what has become the spiritual successor to Eastern, at least to folks in Atlanta. There are employees in pretty much every department that worked for Eastern at some point. Some of the most senior rampers when I worked there were ex-Eastern employees that had been with AirTran pretty much since the launch of Valujet.

While AirTran's operations @ ATL are still smaller than Eastern's was at their height, that's something that 7-10 years down the road will probably not be the case.

Quoting Lrdc9 (Reply 37):If they can find the room. Isn't that why they were deffering orders also?

7-10 years down the road is a potential time table for the South Passenger Terminal @ ATL being built. It is pretty much assumed that they will be the primary tenant of the facility. They deferred orders because they decided to slow down their expansion plans. The gate situation @ ATL may have played a role in this, as evidenced by the amount of non-ATL routes they've started in recent years. They also didn't count on one of the Big Six airlines that was in CH. 11 to survive and that one of the others would be resurgent despite downgrading their domestic network.

Whatever the case is there is plenty of room for a domestic/slash intl startup carrier at MIA....Concourse F is emptying out fairly quickly now as an example.

The supposed description seems quite similar to Spirits route structure......sure is a 'coincidence'....huh?

With no real LCC competition at MIA, unlike the swarm at FLL, that would bode well for at least the initial if it would be started fairly quickly.

I also had thought that the EAL corp was still functioning on a extremely limited basis as well......and I have to admit my first thought was that "Eastern" could be a fake name to mask temporarily a move by an existing carrier.

Virgin America is a U.S. based low-cost airline that began service on 8 August 2007. The airline's stated aim is to provide low-fare, high-quality service for "long-haul point-to-point service between major metropolitan cities on the Eastern and West Coast seaboards".